The outgoing year, 5777, was a year of rejoicing for the Right and mourning for the Left. Netanyahu was an honoured guest on five continents: Australia, Africa, Europe, Asia and America.

Incoming and outgoing tourism reached new heights. The shekel is one of the most stable currencies in the world. Artists from all over the world appeared in Israel. Even the Occupation is feeling good, it has managed to suppress the intifada of the knives and ensure a routine life for Israelis. The new year, 5778, began auspiciously on the international stage with the success of the Jewish Home party’s twin in Germany. Eighty-eight German Smotriches will enter the Bundestag. In this context, BDS looks faded and irrelevant.

The Right have every reason to wish each other a happy new year. The fact that the battered Left is still showing signs of life is practically a Hanukkah miracle.

A missing link

I took upon myself the mission of monitoring all the broadcast reports related to the attack at the settlement of Har Adar. For 15 hours I followed the reports on IDF Radio and the three television channels. Throughout those 15 hours the reports and commentary were identical. The attacker, Nimr Muhammad al-Jamal, was involved in a dispute with his wife, who had fled to Jordan. That fact, along with incitement on the social media, was the cause of the attack, according to Israel. Also, all the reports included interviews with settlers from Har Adar, who lamented the death of the coexistence that they believed had prevailed between the settlement and the Palestinian workers who worked there every day in service jobs, the attacker among them.

One fact missing from all the reports is the Occupation as a motivation for the attack. The fact that the residents of the Palestinian villages Bidu and Beit Surik wake up every morning without rights and in full view of the villas of the settlement on stolen or plundered Palestinian land, entrance to which involves a humiliating inspection, is not conducive to feelings of good neighbourliness. The only right they have is to work and clean the houses of their settler neighbours, which does a lot more to contribute to feelings of hostility and frustration than the flight of the attacker’s wife to Jordan.

The coexistence the settlers spoke of – some of them waxed lyrical about how “they are like family” – is not the coexistence of equal rights but the coexistence of horse and rider. That kind of coexistence generates periodic outbreaks of violence, which tragically exact a price in human life. The ending of the Occupation is the way to true coexistence.

The attacker left behind him 4 minor children who committed no crime but will pay the price, because their house will be demolished. Thus is Israel raising the next generation of vengeance-seekers.